12/30/2009 @ 6:00PM

The Short List

These firms are standouts in their industries, with consistent revenue and profit growth, respect for managing shareholder capital and a healthy earnings outlook.

Hormel Foods

Hormel Foods
benefited from falling pork belly prices this year, even as consumers dialed back on its canned meats, chilis and Jennie-O turkey products. Net income in 2009 rose 20% to $343 million, despite a 3% drop in revenue to $6.5 billion. Timothy Ramey, an analyst with D.A. Davidson, likes the outlook. “People have gotten in touch with cooking at home again.”

Hormel has pressed 30% sales growth out of its 72-year-old Spam franchise since 2006, according to Information Resources. If you find yourself peeling open a can of Spam, try it with a pinot gris, suggests Ramey, who also owns a vineyard in Oregon. “It’ll drive through the heavy salt content.” –Jon Bruner

DirecTV

Despite the tough economy, satellite television outfit
DirecTV
increased its subscriber base 6% to 18.4 million through the first nine months of 2009. Revenue was up 8% to an estimated $15.6 billion. But with
Comcast
buying NBC/Universal, DirecTV (now majority-owned by John Malone) could face tough negotiations in the coming years over the fees it pays to show NBC cable stations like Bravo and SyFy. And if the Federal Communications Commission follows a court suggestion to eliminate the 30% cap on how many viewers one cable company can serve, Comcast could achieve a national footprint akin to that of Directv. –Dorothy Pomerantz

Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com
started up a decade ago to sell sales-automation software that runs over the Web instead of on corporate servers. What was then a novel concept is now widely embraced. A quarter of Salesforce’s new deals are coming from non-sales-related Web software, including applications for accounting and project management. Salesforce.com’s revenue is up 24% over the past year to $1.24 billion. Operating income rose even faster, from $58.5 million to $105.8 million.

Founder Marc Benioff is now predicting the end of e-mail and the rise of social networking tools. In November he announced plans to make Salesforce’s software more social, with Facebook and Twitter feeds running alongside its business apps. He admits the future arrives slowly: “I’ve been talking about the end of software for 10 years, and it’s still happening.” –Victoria Barret

Netflix

One of every five rented DVDs now goes out in a red
Netflix
envelope. The mail-order phenomenon continued to add customers this year (now up to 11 million) and increase its sizable market cap premium over
Blockbuster
. For the first nine months of 2009 revenue was up 22% to $1.2 billion and net income was up 41% to $85 million. In preparation for a discless future, Netflix is pushing into streaming video, with 17,000 titles available for online viewing. Netflix is also making deals with the likes of
Sony
,
Microsoft
and
Nintendo
to allow its movies to be streamed over videogame consoles. –Dorothy Pomerantz

Coach

Handbag and accessories retailer
Coach
has weathered the downturn by expanding its offerings of lower-price luxury goods. In its U.S. retail stores, half of Coach’s handbags cost between $200 and $300, up from 30% a year ago. The $3.2 billion (sales) company is expanding its footprint in China, where it opened five stores in the September quarter and saw same-store sales increase by double digits. Over the past five years, Coach has posted average earnings-per-share growth of 28% and, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S forecasts, will maintain 15% profit growth over the next few years. Coach delivered an 85% return to shareholders over the 12 months, including dividends. –Helen Coster

T. Rowe Price

An emphasis on retirement investing and a catalog of inexpensive mutual funds helped
T. Rowe Price Group
rope in clients and keep them happy in 2009. Assets under management (nearly $370 billion) popped 33% in 2009, besting the recovery pace of larger (and more expensive) competitors such as
Franklin Resources
($540 billion, up 30% in 2009). T. Rowe’s latest goal: to drum up business outside the U.S. Non-American investors now account for 11% of managed assets. T. Rowe is also pouncing on actively managed ETFs, a specialty of rival Invesco. –Asher Hawkins

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments
is fast grabbing market share in the $30 billion analog chip business, translating real-world signals into ones and zeros digital computers can understand. It ended the year with 15% of the analog industry, and is investing in new manufacturing processes to grab more as demand rebounds. Analysts expect TI revenue will fall 17% to $10.4 billion in 2009, from $12.5 billion in 2008, rebounding to just $11.6 billion by the end of 2010. But gross margins should climb to 52% in 2010 from 48% in 2008, as TI’s lucrative analog chips become a bigger part of its mix. –Brian Caulfield